San Francisco provides many free or very low-cost tax preparation services for low income people. But here’s the rub with free tax services in San Francisco: 99% of those people have little beyond W2 income, so that their returns are very easy.
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If you’re not in that group, then a “free” or “cheap” tax service might cause more harm than it’s worth. We don’t provide free tax services in San Francisco. We’re not even cheap, but we do work aggressively for high income individuals as the #1 tax service in San Francisco.
Having said that of course, if we bill you, say, $100, and we save you $200 in tax, that makes us cheap! In fact, you’d do that every day of the week if you could!
Our job is to see to it that you pay the smallest amount of tax possible, both to the State of California and to the US Federal Government. Many of our clients are high net worth individuals, and many of them have tax issues beyond just the State of California. In particular, we have a lot of clients who have tax liabilities in Canada, and we are very familiar with handling tax problems in the country.
Clients With Tax Liabilities In Multiple States
Of course, some of our clients have to file tax returns in a number of different states, and at Safe Harbor we partner with many other CPA’s throughout the country. This means that if there is a complex situation in another state that is beyond our own immediate knowledge, we are still able to help our clients because we can obtain the necessary information from one of our partners in the state concerned who will be fully conversant and up to date with current legislation there.
Many of our clients also have business interests in other countries, especially in China, India, Israel, and Western Europe. These business interests and/or property income may generate income that creates a tax liability in the US. We also have clients who are not US citizens, but are permanent residents or foreigners residing in the US and may generate income here that is liable for tax in another country. This is referred to as expatriate tax preparation and it is something in which we specialize at Safe Harbor. Another common issue is FBAR compliance which concerns foreign bank accounts and is another area in which we have expertise.
Many of the tax issues that our clients have are far too complex to be dealt with by using free tax services in San Francisco, so you are much better off having your affairs handled by a company that has the knowledge and abilities to deal with them successfully.
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